With the prevalence of diseases related to mosquito bites, some health professional believe that there is a link between the mosquito virus and brain damage in infants.
A case in point is Luiza, the daughter of Angelica Pereira, 20, from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. According to Hufftington Post, her doctor told her and her husband that her daughter suffered a rare condition called microcephaly, which is medically associated to mental retardation.
Luisa was born in October and health professionals noted that her head circumference was less than the normal range. The neurologist extended his bad news to the couple, informing them that Luiza's brain damage had led to cerebral palsy.
According to Pereira, her heart had stopped and all she had kept thinking about had been all the struggles and discrimination her baby would suffer. She was bothered by a mosquito bite, which she first thought as a minor issue. Things got complicated when she woke up with rashes, fever, headache, and burning eyes the next day.
Microcephaly is medical congenital condition characterized by abnormal smallness of the head. It is caused by a developing abnormality in the womb or growth disruption and is often associated with an incomplete brain development and mental retardation. The condition cannot be usually detected by ultrasound during pregnancy and it can sometimes be detected at birth.
For the record, more than 2,700 infants have been born in Brazil with microcephaly in 2015, which presented a 150 increase from 2014. According to The New York Times, the rise in the number of babies born with the condition had prompted Brazil's health ministry to warn pregnant women to observe measures on avoiding mosquito bites.